Update: Man dies at burn center after Hookerton house fire

HOOKERTON — The man who was rescued out of a burning house on Sept. 17 and taken to a burn center died Thursday.

Guy Potter, 53, was pulled through a bedroom window of Kelly Radeka’s house at 704 S. William Hooker Drive in Hookerton by Radeka.

“I just picked up something and smashed (the window),” she said, “and he came to me. … He came to the window and I was able to grab him.”

Radeka said it was the adrenaline that hit her when the smoke detectors in the house went off.

“I had one in every single room in the house,” she said about the smoke detectors.

But the devices may not have been working, Emergency Management Director Randy Skinner said. Her mother, Diane Whitehurst, 54, was asleep on the living room couch and Potter was sleeping in the back bedroom where the fire started.

Radeka, whose bedroom door is next to the front door, first woke up her mother and got her and Radeka’s 11-year-old son out.

“I actually put my son out in the front yard with my phone,” she said. He used the cell phone and called 911 about 12:04 a.m. Radeka ran back in to wake up her mother, and then tried to open the door of her son’s bedroom, where Potter was sleeping. But it was too hot.

Radeka said she ran outside and saw flames through the side window inside the back bedroom and she continued around to the back where she rescued Potter.

“He was talking,” she said about Potter. “I felt bad because I knew it was really hot in there. I sprayed him with a water hose until the EMT got him.”

Potter, whose family resides in Washington, died about 3 p.m. at the North Carolina Jaycees Burn Center in Chapel Hill. Radeka said he had been induced into a coma and died peacefully. There will not be a funeral service, she said.

“It seems like a dream,” she said about the experience. “It was so fast and so crazy and slow, at the same time. I can’t describe it.”

The Red Cross provided a hotel for the family for a few days. Whitehurst is staying with other family members.

Radeka said her neighbors had moved out and had planned to put their house on the market. But they agreed to let Radeka and her family move into the house instead, while her house is being gutted and repaired.